End Of Year 2025
This year I started writing a bunch of lists and short essays and then thought it would be fun to remove the titles, leaving a random assortment for you to all sift through. Well, that was a complete mess, so I reinstated the titles and added some random hits and misses as compensation.
Here it all is.
Track of the year
Ondo Fudd - ‘Limelight’ [Dekmantel]
It’s been difficult not to compare, and to compare unfavourably. It’s neutral to begin with: we’re both called Joe. We both decided to put out a mix CD this year, released a week apart from each other. Joe’s was made up of entirely original music made by what was billed as a bunch of ‘emergent artists’ but was in fact just the many heteronyms of Joe. Mine was made up of entirely original music made by friends and acquaintances. But at a certain point the comparison begins to creak. Joe’s project was released through a proper label, Dekmantel, and featured some things I’d have liked to have done with mine but couldn’t afford, like a vinyl sampler, and other things I didn’t even consider, like a rotating gatefold CD packaging based on medieval ‘volvelles’ designed by the guy who did Spiritualized’s Ladies And Gentlemen You Are Floating In Space, which is literally in the V&A. As you can see, it’s been difficult not to compare without feeling a bit budget.
A Rhythm Protects One has — rightly — been featured in pretty much every end of year list going. And now it’s featuring in this one, not as a whole (although it is an excellent whole), but for one track in particular. When the release was put up for pre-order, ‘Limelight’ was the second single. I guess you can see why: the first half of the album is a sequence of quite minimal, moderately paced, even sedate material, far from attention-grabbing in a 15-second Instagram clip. The reference in the press material to Ricardo’s Fabric 36 is entirely apposite, the focus in this opening stretch being on sound design and mood building, the gradual accrual of momentum seemingly (and that’s the trick) an afterthought. Then, during the track ‘Lululu’, as we approach the halfway mark of the mix, things start to happen. The beat and bassline both start to step, a snare drum stutters insistently and then dramatically, the sound effects ornamenting the track gain a harder edge and begin to cut through the stasis, there’s the sound of missiles falling from the sky — “weeeeee!” — and then, with the arrival of ‘Limelight’, they explode.
In the DJ mix version of the album, ‘Limelight’ practically jumps out from behind ‘Lululu’s closing cadences, ensnaring you with a spastic melodic motif that will underpin the whole of the rest of the track. It’s like an Escher’s staircase: it’s difficult to pin down if it’s ascending or descending. Repeatedly it brings you back to the same spot, and every time it does so, it immediately sets you off again. For the first section, every minute there’s a climax and reset, each cycle welcoming new interjections, some very musical and some pure sci-fi noise, all of them highly theatrical. Then at the halfway mark — halfway through the track, halfway through the mix — those huge celestial chords, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, and again not 30 seconds later, celestial yes but also kind of twisted inside out, convulsing. When this frankly jawdropping moment is over, which it is quickly, at 4m30s, we’re left with the sonic detritus: stifled gulps, throbbing pitchbent synthwaves, hollow percussive clatters, before the whole thing comes crashing back in again.
As it finally lapses, in the mixed version of the album, back into the spare, metronomic pulse of ‘Milkyways’, it’s as if the stage lights once again dim, resetting the scene for the album’s final scene. There is a fair bit of bass pressure towards the end, especially with closer ‘Mothertime’ (the first single), but the ecstatic release of ‘Limelight’ — the least 4/4-sounding track with a 4/4 kick drum; the most obtuse banger; both an intensely intellectual exercise and the height of melodrama — makes it exactly what it says on the tin: the magical, all-singing all-dancing centrepiece of a remarkable album.
Other tracks
C Powers - ‘I Will Not Live In A Fascist State’ [Sorry]
Reviewed it here, played it everywhere.
Dorisburg & Efraim Kent - ‘Wired To The Mainframe’ [Aniara]
Could slot into the opening half of A Rhythm Protects One, and give it a bit of extra muscle in the process.
Hélder Russo - ‘Whipitt’ [Percebes]
Reviewed it here, also played it everywhere.
Intelligenza Artigianale - ‘Replicate/Simulate (ROTLA Calculate Remix)’ [Distant Future]
Raiders Of The Lost Arp brings his customary class to this remix. The IA LP on Childhood Intelligence was also great.
James Massiah - ‘Might Be The One’ [Accidental Meetings]
First heard this when Chima Isaaro dropped it at Parabéns (here). Visceral.
Marcela Dias Sindaco - ‘Grande Final’ [Fixed Rhythms]
Is it obtuse to choose the one non-130bpm, non-vocal tune off an LP otherwise stuffed with them as my favourite? Perhaps. But Electro Tropical’s closing statement was also its crowning achievement.
Peverelist - ‘Pulse XX’ [Livity Sound]
If Pev got commissioned to do a new theme tune for The Pink Panther, this is what it’d sound like.
Shanti Celeste - ‘Thinking About You’ [Peach Discs]
Pure love since first listen.
Sondáil - ‘Valleys’ [art-aud]
Can I really put a tune in my end of year list that I never once played out? Yes, because one day, when the moment is right, I will, and it’ll be the best thing ever.
Viewfinder - ‘Solace’ [Rescan]
I didn’t play at Panoramabar this year but, had I done so, this is the first tune I’d have put on.
Will Hofbauer - ‘Squito’ [Aus]
It wouldn’t be an end of year list without a Will Hofbauer tune, so here you go. Special mention for ‘Silica Gel’ off the same EP.
Worst track of the year
Jordan Nocturne - ‘Just A Dance’ [Polari]
I said there’d be more honest criticism on this newsletter going forwards, so here’s a start. I can’t think of any other track from 2025 that pained my actual heart as much as this one. Its producer announced it on Instagram with the caption:
This has always been one of my favourite choruses but I struggled to find an opportunity to play the original at peak time so had it resung and built a track around it. My homage to Hypnotic Tango is finally out this Friday on @polari.records.
First let’s take a look at the lyrics of that “favourite chorus” from the original of ‘Hypnotic Tango’:
Look on the floor and all is spinning round
Someone told me this was just a dance
And take a chance I ain't met before
Do you think I really have a chance?
The broken European English that is the hallmark of all the best Italo disco might be accentuating the effect, but even so this could never be mistaken for a straightforwardly uplifting narrative, at least not by anyone actually listening. There’s uncertainty: the spinning round could be whirling dancers, but it feels more likely it’s the observer’s head that’s spinning. There’s intrigue: who is the undermining “someone” who has slyly insinuated that this is “just a dance” when, clearly, for the narrator, it’s something far more layered than that? There’s pregnant possibility: the chance of something new, that could be good or bad, we’re not yet sure. And there’s survival: that final line, “Do you think I really have a chance?”, although an ostensibly open question, to my ears forecloses the possibility of anything good coming to pass from this dancefloor, in fact implying that the narrator is almost certain to drown if they take even one step onto it.
I’m sure it isn’t just my own conflicted relationship with the dancefloor colouring my interpretation. The male vocals that pad out the song’s narrative give the context: a woman welded to her seat in a booth, unable — despite or because of the entreaties of a series of unappealing men — to stand up and brave the dancefloor. “Give me this night in a foreign land”, the male narrator sings, co-opting the woman’s thoughts. She remains alienated and doesn’t make a move. The tango is hypnotic, full of both desire and danger, but ultimately she really doesn’t think she can do it.
It’s a lyrical theme that demands ambiguity from the musical accompaniment, and so My Mine gave it that in the shape of a chord progression that starts out positively, with two ascending major chords, but then repeatedly lapses back into the doubt and hesitation of minor chords:
Look on the / E flat major
Floor and all was / F major
Spinning round / G minor
… / F major
Someone told me / E flat major
This was just a / F major
Da-ance / D minor
… / F major then E flat major
Please excuse my almost certainly misremembered GCSE music theory, but the point is that every moment of (renewed) optimism is quickly tempered by pessimism, in both the lyrics and the music.
Presumably this ambiguity is one of the things that prevented Jordan Nocturne from feeling able to play this chorus out at peaktime. So what did he do? I’m not even going to get into things like the hideously dissonant intro and outro sections he welded onto his re-record of the main chorus. I’m not going to get into the way he layers lines from the chorus on top of that intro in seemingly random fashion, further fragmenting the original narrative and suffocating the vocals in delay. And I’m not even going to get into the utterly basic, manipulative way the chorus repeats over and over in what is essentially an EDM break and drop, complete with filtered bassline, snare roll and wooshing white noise. No, I’m going to get into one particular thing that is different about this remake:
Look on the / E flat major
Floor and all was / F major
Spinning round / B FLAT MAJOR
... / F major
The difference is tiny, just a semitone shift in the chord playing under the words “spinning round”, moving the G to an F, and thus transforming it from G minor to B flat major. An infinitesimal shift, but to me it represents exactly what’s wrong with this track and, beyond that, a large part of what’s wrong with the direction much dance music has gone in over the past few years. It’s like this change is saying: no, your conflictedness or diffidence or contradictory feelings are not welcome on our dancefloor. This is a place for smiling, putting your hands in the air, whether or not you feel that way inside. The “spinning round” is EUPHORIC, not disorientating. PUT THOSE DAMN HANDS IN THE AIR.
As I’ve written about before, sad bangers require a certain level of sensitivity to play out, and I think a lot of DJs balk at that task. I guess that’s OK. But what I simply can’t stomach is the fact that someone who doesn’t have that sensitivity, rather than just making their own uncomplicated bangers, would instead feel the need to grab hold of a classic, beautifully crafted and highly equivocal piece of music like ‘Hypnotic Tango’ and unthinkingly repackage it as cheap euphoria, a facile simulacrum of itself. The intent to reduce the track until it appeals to the lowest common denominator is even baldly stated in the new title: ‘Just A Dance’. It’s like all those people who, on hearing any kind of self-reflexivity be it from a DJ or a raver or anyone else, are given to dismiss it with the words “it’s just a party”. It’s not just a party. It’s not just a dance. And it’s heartbreaking to hear it suggested otherwise.
Oldie of the year
Prince - ‘17 Days’
From hearing the ‘Piano And A Microphone’ version on a scorching beach at Kala Festival in June to Dorisburg playing a reduced, almost minimal house edit of that version near the end of his set at Public Records in August to me then going down a wormhole trying to ID that edit and finding Rahaan’s own masterful version, this was the year of ‘17 Days’.
2024 releases I discovered in 2025
aka-Sol - Ta Kish Kan EP [Bliss Point]
Appleblim - Secret Hive EP [Self-released]
D33 - ‘Confia (ft. Mystic Bill)’ [Faith Beat]
Huey Mnemonic - Cutting Room Floor EP [Self-released]
Leo Zero - ‘Low Down’ [Self-released]
Nexus 21 - ‘Everything (No Statues)’ [Network]
Really fun gigs
UMI, Brussel, 24/01 (here)
Research, Seattle, 07/02 (here)
Bonanza Festival, Buritaca, 14/02 (here)
Snug @ Savage, Hanoi, 17/05
El Cuerpo Del Disco @ Goya, Madrid, 05/07 (here)
PDA @ Ziegrastrasse, Berlin, 27/07 (here)
Globus, Berlin, 31/07
Public Records, NYC, 09/08
Honcho Campout, Pennsylvania, 16/08 (here)
Lux Frágil, Lisbon, 04/10
Outra Cena w/Nick Kagame, Lisbon, 14/11
CURVS @ Higher Ground, Lisbon, 05/12 (here)
Most unhinged set times
Anyone paying attention knows that queers have a thing for unhinged set times. Why have the DJ start on the hour when they could start at ten past? Why have two DJs play back to back when you could have them play solo sets with a poorly defined overlap period of b2b in the middle? It gets even more out of hand at big events when you have live sets and performances to deal with:
I worry for the interns whose job it is to complete everyone’s itineraries and proofread the social media assets.
But there’s one particular (and lovely) party that consistently excels in this area. In the run up to my gig at Dance Club in DC back in April (tour write-up here), my main preoccupation was about my set time. As it turned out, I played a very civilised 1am-3am. But you can better understand my worries when you consider Dance Club’s usual approach to programming:
This is not an isolated incident — there have been even more labyrinthine running orders over the past couple of years, especially when they’ve done two-room parties. I just wish I had taken more screen captures for the archive. Never change guys.
BEST SINGLE THING OF THE YEAR
EP of the year
Accessories To Murder - MURDER002 [Accessory]
Unbeknownst to me, my first exposure to this EP was actually back in summer 2024, when CCL played ‘Moonshake’ at Freerotation, heard around the 58 minute mark in this recording. A few tracks before this moment, in a set that, for CCL at least, was pretty lean and 4/4 focussed, they dropped a huge wubbing dubstep tune, the reactions to which you can hear on the crowd mic. Did this signal a switch into more broken territory? Did it fuck! After a quick diversion back into tense, metallic 4/4, the beat starts to broaden, get messier and more unhinged. At a certain point your brain registers what your body must already be feeling: this isn’t precision tooled electronic music any more, this is pure rock-out vibes, slap bass and crash cymbals, limber drum fills, and Damo Suzuki’s delicately sing-song voice delivering its signature nonsense pronouncements. On the dancefloor it felt like a rip in space-time, 1973 peeking its face through the hole, only to retreat less than a minute later. Listening today, that moment feels only too brief, especially now we know that the full edit of ‘Moonshake’ gives us almost six minutes of mayhem.
Anyway, as I said, I didn’t know anything about what it was at the time. Then many months later, in fact almost a whole year later, Miles sent me a link to his Trash BF Unravelling mix of ‘Autumn Sweater’ by Yo La Tengo. Now I was never a huge Yo La Tengo fan: fey vocals are a bit of a dealbreaker for me, and Ira Kaplan’s voice is like the dictionary definition of fey. Nonetheless I did listen to the band quite a lot at university, probably because they were darlings of Pitchfork magazine and that was my compass for what to listen to at the time. I have a memory of falling asleep to I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One a lot. Well, Miles took their hit ‘Autumn Sweater’ from that album and pumped it up to a playable 127bpm. Yes it has the vocals still, but they are less smothering, the focus now shifted to the breakbeat and atmospheric density of the instrumental. A few weeks after Miles’s message, and knowing how much it would resonate with the party promoters, I chose it to close my set at the El Cuerpo Del Disco pride party in Madrid (described here). At that same party I also dropped his version of ‘Are Friends Electric?’ by Tubeway Army, a song that I have always been a massive fan of, and not only because of the Sugababes.
Not long after that, Miles put the tunes into production as the next Accessories To Murder EP, and sent me the other tracks: that ‘Moonshake’ edit and another called ‘Danger’, the A1, which was a recut of the tune of the same name by Pylon. This was the tune I’d end up playing the most over the coming months, including in my set at Honcho Campout, with Miles in the crowd. (I also discovered this hilarious hard house version of ‘Are Friends Electric?’ from 2001, which in many ways is much more annoying than Miles’s version, but has a slow-down breakdown that made me laugh.)
I feel a bit strange making a collection of edits my EP of the year. I’ve obviously made a few myself, but remain generally quite resistant to the urge to mould everything and anything into a particular idea of how dance music should be. With the exception of the Tubeway Army re-version, though, Miles hasn’t done anything particularly crazy with the original tunes, and I think that’s why they’re so successful. Each re-version is in tune with the spirit of the original. He hasn’t just crowbarred the tracks into more contemporary forms, and when he’s played around with the vocals — which are kept more or less intact — it’s for comic effect: Gary randomly yelping “it’s cold outside!”, for no particular reason, will literally never get old. And beneath all of this, there’s one simple fact: these tunes are an absolute joy to DJ with.
Other EPs
Chanchuyo - Augurios EP [WVWV]
From the glittering panoply of music Ranma Entero put out this year, this late one under a new alias sparkled the brightest, also signalling some new and exciting pistas for 2026.
DJ Fitness - Gunch2 EP [Self-released]
I almost put this at #1. Playing ‘Chinese Dog’ at Campout and ‘Yasunao’s Tones’ at Globus were personal DJ highlights of this summer.
DJ Vandel - Medellin, A Dance EP [CR.43A]
I met DJ Vandel at Bonanza Festival in February, and only a couple of months later Gwenan surprised me by playing his first CR.43A EP at Void in Philly. Tracks like ‘Playa Y Oriental’ on this follow-up EP are all about few ingredients being used exactly the right way. House!!
Duckett - World View EP [Solar Phenomenon]
It wouldn’t be an end of year list without Duckett. I would have made ‘Punch And Judy’ track of the year but I didn’t want to leave out ‘This Is It’ and ‘Your Love’. Consistently a cut above.
Gladstone Deluxe - No Haterade EP [Fixed Rhythms]
When I was asked to contribute to RA’s recent ‘best music of the past 25 years’ project, I put Gladstone Deluxe’s Spherical Intelligence EP from 2023 in my list. It was the only entry from the past five years, and the next newest selection was from 2017 (Savage Hymn’s ‘La Vida Sigue Igual’). Not many are doing it like Gladstone, and No Haterade was just further evidence of that.
Louis R - Wigg/Wet EP [Self-released]
Quirky, classic, thoughtful, as confident in its references as in its own idiosyncrasy. This is music for particular moments in the hands of particular DJs. I for one relish that challenge.
Maximum Tilt - MT001 EP [Self-released]
Cerebral tunes for big rooms, these three tracks are immaculately produced yet packed with feeling. They pull the trick of sounding like the 90s but without coming off as an imitation. And if we’re going to have a big shimmering breakdown, make it soft and sexy like the one in ‘Burn’.
Miagma - Evergreen Crush EP [Looseneck]
Has mulch house jumped the shark (frog)? It seems that mossy discourse faded a little in 2025, though just the other day I found myself reading a DJ bio that referred to the artist’s “herbaceous sound”. Well, Miagma is keeping the flag flying for all things pondweedy with the “amphibian synthesis” on this EP, and I am not complaining one bit. His best all-round effort yet.
M.Chrome - Flare Rider EP [Studiomaster]
Marco Passarani is one of the most reliable producers out there and has been so since the late 90s, which is astounding really. To put out music this good, this classic, in 2025 is a real feat. And he does it all unassumingly. Hats off Marco.
Paul Fleetwood - Street Magic EP [Perimeter Junk]
See next.
Label of the year
Perimeter Junk started the year with label boss Paul Fleetwood’s Street Magic EP, which I listed above and remains one of my most-played and most-fun-had-while-playing releases of the year. Then there was Perimeter Loops Vol. II, a collection of 18 130bpm two-bar loops spanning muggy ambient (Korrē ‘Forget How’), game boy bleeps (dialectic sines ‘Bhlop’), dirty overdriven electro (Naeem’s ‘DAFTTF’, also featured in my Campout set), stepping intrigue (ELO ‘Bucle 20’), pinging house breakdowns (Justin Cudmore ‘New York’, which I tried to fit in every set I played in NYC) and, if it’s possible to choose a favourite, tantan’s ‘ooh can I finish this’, brilliant not just for the infectious loop, but also for the idea of not being able to finish a two-bar loop. Next was the Split EP by Esuna and Thorium Boys: the former’s Norken-esque tracks hitting a bit like Louis R’s above, full of interesting ideas and kind of odd in the mixdown, but with their own interior logic; and the latter’s techno and electro much tighter, tooled, sounding just like Mr. Fleetwood himself. Then there was another release by Paul, the Cape Breton Files EP, which he wrote in the spring while staying off the coast in rural Nova Scotia, and you can completely hear that in the the music: two dense, pastoral techno tracks that you feel should soundtrack a heron taking flight over a frosty lake. Finally, just yesterday, the label put out its latest pre-order, bringing its release count for 2025 to five. And judging by the track currently available, the gnarly Bizz O.D.-like workout ‘Silent Mantra’ by Acid Kult, it’s another hit.
Best dancefloor moment
When I was about 14 years old, one of my best friends at school introduced me to nu metal. I guess I must have been aware of the mainstream stuff like Linkin Park and System Of A Down, but this friend was into bands like (hed) Planet Earth and Drowning Pool. (He was also a Juggalo, aka a huge fan of Insane Clown Posse, though he never managed to inculcate me into that particular subculture, despite me having a massive crush on him. A couple of years ago I looked him up online and, believe it or not, these days he makes his living as a doctor working for touring musicians and at music festivals.) The first time I heard ‘Bodies’ was via him, and a bit later ‘Here To Stay’ by Korn. And a group of us would go to nu metal nights at the Carling Academy in the centre of Birmingham, get fucked up on blue WKD and mosh about.
I think I must be a similar age to S’aint Panic, a New York DJ who was one of my assigned artists at Honcho Campout this year, because it seems they had a similar teenage experience. I will have plenty more to say about the recording of their set that Sunday morning, but for now I’ll focus on this one moment: nearly two hours in, after a truly wide-ranging selection of sound bowls, modern classical, rock n roll, folksy singer-songwriters, indie rock and Tyler The Creator, Cedric played a UK funky edit of Deftones’ ‘Change (In The House Of Flies)’, the gag for me being that despite listening to all those other bands, I never actually listened to Deftones. Presumably some other gays in the crowd were already losing it at this point, but I was still blissfully unaware of what was going on, until I suddenly became aware of a voice looping through the music: “let the bodies hit the floor”. I turned to Gwen, my tech colleague at the booth, and said “Is that Drowning Pool?” I couldn’t believe my ears. Then there was a peremptory cut (I think unintended) and the voice came back, now with a single kick pulsing underneath it, the guitars then bubbling up and then “FLOOOORRRGHGHHH”, the scream heard round the world.
I can pinpoint this as the precise moment when that Sunday transitioned into pure chaos, which would continue through not only Cedric’s ensuing nu metal power 20 minutes (Korn, Slipknot, Linkin Park, Three Days Grace), the brilliant remainder of their set, Jellyfish’s following three hours of straight-up slammers, the apocalyptic downpours during said three hours, raving in the mud, sweat, tears, and a frankly difficult to recall whirlwind of emotions and adventures that ended up with me dancing alone up at the Grove, the sun filtering through the trees, heart bursting as Honcho played ‘808 The Bassqueen’.
Other lovely dances
Gwenan @ Bonanza Festival, Buritaca, 14/02
Telma & DJ Caring @ Incognito, Lisbon, 28/03
CC:DISCO! / Ciel @ Kala Festival, Dhermi, 06-07/06
Luke Vibert @ Waking Life, Crato, 21/06
Dorisburg @ Public Records, NYC, 08/08
Leeon @ Good Room, NYC, 09/08
Xiaolin / Viewtiful Joe @ Outra Cena, Lisbon, 26/09
Ranma Entero @ Outra Cena, Lisbon, 03/10
Peach @ Lux Frágil, Lisbon, 01/11
Club CCC @ B’leza, Lisbon, 13/12
Afterparties
Saturday lunchtime, Bonanza Festival, Buritaca, Feb
I wrote about this here, but I’m not sure I conveyed well enough the fact that, despite all the obstacles laid in my path — burning sun, sandflies, sneezing dogs, wayward frisbees, stomach pains brought on one too many shrimp tacos, shots of aguardiente and bumplets of ketamine — I had the absolute BEST TIME this Sunday on the beach in Buritaca.
Sunday late morning, Savage, Hanoi, mid May
Not sure I should count this one cos I was just playing a late set at the main party, but it felt like an afterparty while I was doing it, and I sure played afterparty music.
My friends C & J’s house, Lisbon, late May
After an empty bar gig that night, an unexpected and utterly joyful house party that extended into the late morning, featuring preppy 20-somethings (when do I ever hang out with preppy 20-somethings?), a bucketload of vermouth, a police visit and new firm friends. One of those really good ones.
Sunday late morning, CSD PDA, Berlin, July
I wrote about this here, but after I’d played I stayed at this party for about four hours longer than I’d planned to and had the best time doing it.
Post-Snax brunch sesh, Berlin, November
Is there a better way to recover from your first (and probably last) ever Snax than a very civilised brunch with (mostly) sober people, followed by 12 hours of playing records, sniffing pills and downing Berliner Luft? I’ll wait.
Worst indicator for 2026
Excess, and I’m not just talking about the above afterparties.
First there’s the ongoing news stories about 1000s-capacity venues opening while midsize and grassroots venues close down left, right and centre. Then there’s seeming death drive towards marathon parties, especially this new year:
Power Dance Club - 26 hours
Golden Record NYC - 32 hours
Berghain Silvester - 33 hours
Tillatec x Is Burning - 78+ hours
I’m sceptical whether either of these trends comes with a genuine will towards opportunities for more artists, or equitable pay for that matter. People say start the year as you mean to go on, but I’m not sure a four-day marathon party in Amsterdam of all places is really the one. Well, as Miss Jean Brodie once said: “for those who like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing they like”.
Happy 2026!
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